Make your soul grow

The "canary bird in the coal mine" theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems.
~Kurt Vonnegut

Happy Poetry Friday! A bunch of Kurt Vonnegut's comments about the arts resonate with me. In the video at the bottom of this post, Ian McKellen is quoting Vonnegut (set to music by French Fuse).

logo with thermal photo by Elena

Summer Poem Swap info! Do you want to send and receive a poem (or five) this summer? Sign up for the Summer Poem Swap! The number of swaps is up to you. You don't need to send anything but a poem, although some folks send additional stuff. You can send it via email or snail mail. If you would like to receive a poem but you don't think you have it in you to send a poem, contact me anyway. We have folks who are happy to send extras.

You are welcome to mail them early, e.g. if you know you will be gone during Swap #4, you can mail #4 at the same time that you mail #3. The deadline to sign up is May 17th, so send me your name, mailing address, email address, and anything else I should know by then. I will send out swap match-ups as soon as I have them ready.

1st swap: June 14-28
2nd swap: June 28-July 12
3rd swap: July 12-July 26
4th swap: July 26-August 9
5th swap: August 9-23

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I went to see Hadestown last weekend so I've been kind of obsessed with listening to it again this week. It's a retelling of the Orpheus/Eurydice story. (Orpheus tries to bring Eurydice out of the Underworld but Hades has one caveat: Orpheus can't look back.)

I've been thinking about various aspects of the story this week, such as -- if Orpheus, talented as he is, can't provide for his love, who can make a living in the arts? He sings a beautiful song about how nature will give them the supplies for their wedding. Nature is great, but sometimes it's cold and you need assistance. Maybe it's because I'm worried about how little our culture cares for the arts that this point stuck out for me.

I'm going to share a song that seems like a poem for multiple voices. The irony, to me, is that Eurydice is in the Underworld because she was poor. What is the enemy?

(The person who wrote the music, Anaïs Mitchell, is playing guitar. *bows respectfully*)



More music because that's how I'm rolling today:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by French Fuse (@frenchfusemusic)

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A Word Edgewise has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Linda!

Bookcases

I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.
~Virginia Woolf

Bookcases for Art Thursday! Revolving, sculptured, painted. Even one from back-in-the-day with all the books chained to the bookcase!

Danner's original revolving book-cases the best in the world for sale here

Library Walk New York City
photo by Lesekreis

Bookcases in the library of the University of Leiden
Engraving by Willem Swanenburgh; drawing by Jan van 't Woudt

Bookshelf
by József Páhy (designer), László Karácsonyi, Valter Lengyel and Attila Grubánovits painters
photo by Jávori István

Sturm
Sculpture by Wolfgang Häckel

Richard Wagner composing at his piano
Rudolf Eichstaedt

Connected to the unknown

I remember the first time I got recognized at an airport, I got so stressed that I had to hide in the plane's bathroom until it took off. But it's much easier now because I've got used to it. People are just people, and I remind myself of that.
~Aurora

For Music Monday, two people who are mononymous (go by a single name): Aurora and Iniko.

Norwegian artist Aurora's first album was called "All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend" -- she is clearly a poet at heart! When I first laid eyes on her, she was being asked what kind of music was her favorite. She responded, "I like silence."

AURORA, Cure for Me:



Iniko, Jericho:

Mirror other

Now there are so many people in the world that the system is repeating itself.
~Manel Esteller

Happy Poetry Friday!

Doppelgänger photo by suhseal

TWIN STRANGERS
Danusha Laméris

For $3.99, the website promises me the opportunity
to find my duplicate, my doppelgänger,
my double. Someone half-way around the world,
or right next door, who wears the same pointed eyebrows,
aquiline (according to the diagram) nose
on a brown and almost-oval face. “Everyone,” they say
“has seven look-alikes.” Each night in bed
I sip my cup of tea and try to forget
life’s many terrible subtractions—all the people
I’ve loved and can’t replace—while scrolling through photos
of people I don’t even know, searching for any trace

read the rest here (I love the ending)

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Thank you to Jone who reminded me to let you know about the Summer Poem Swap!

Yes, it's happening! If you're interested, email me for details or wait until next Poetry Friday when I will include them in my post. (I need to figure out the dates.) :)

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Buffy Silverman has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Buffy!

Release from Deception

“I will burst thy bonds asunder, / being fettered with the bonds of darkness, and a long night, / that you will not be condemned with this world.”
~the inscription (in Latin) on the book at the bottom of the sculpture Disillusion

For Art Thursday, a marble statue that deserves its own post: Disillusion (or Release from Deception) by Francesco Queirolo (1704–1762). Queirolo carved the angel, the fisherman, and the incredible net from one piece of marble. Disillusion was commissioned by Raimondo di Sangro as a memorial for his father in their family burial site, the Sansevero Chapel.

It reportedly took Queirolo seven years to fabricate this marble net, which he crafted without a workshop, apprentice, or other form of external assistance. The Sansevero Chapel Museum notes that this is because even the most specialized sculptors “refused to touch the delicate net in case it broke into pieces in their hands.” (Kelly Richman-Abdou)

A drawing of Disillusion, 1894
by Franz Robert Richard Brendámour

National Poetry Month wrap-up

Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.
~Terri Windling

My theme for National Poetry Month was poems inspired by short stories, so each week I found a different short story and used it as a springboard. I found that, since human nature is timeless, the age of the story did not affect how relevant it was. Old stories can be viewed in fresh ways.

This could be a nice approach for teachers to support reading comprehension and critical thinking...let students pick a story (or folk tale or fable) and respond to it with a poem.

My collection:

*The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls by Marcel Aymé (Two poems)
*The Widow's Cruise by Frank Stockton (Mrs. Ducket's Adventure)
*The Changeling collected by Lady Wilde (Changeling)
*Federigo's Falcon by Giovanni Boccaccio (How to Woo a Woman)
* The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (If I Could Write Like Poe)
* The Thousand and One Nights (Scheherazade)

This looks like a good story source : World Folklore

Haiden Henderson

I'd be lucky
To be the gum she scrapes off
The bottom of her Jimmy Choos
~Haiden Henderson

For Music Monday, Haiden Henderson with "Fresh Blood":



More Haiden:
Bleachers
hell of a good time